Trump lowers level of debate

Donald Trump has spent his entire presidential campaign undermining intelligent debate in America. He has, without fail, lowered the level of debate in this country. His campaign has been riddled with derogatory language, simple grammatical errors, made-up words, a constant stream of falsehoods and inflammatory language.

This past week was the first of three presidential debates. According to a scientific poll conducted by CNN/ORC, Hillary Clinton won the debate by a margin of 35 points. However, Trump insists “he won in all the online polls.” He cites numerous online polls conducted by conservative websites, such as Breitbart.com and others, with no scientific adherence.

These online polls aren’t scientific in the slightest; online polls can be filled out numerous times by a single person and they don’t take into account the diversity of the electorate. Online polls have no place in determining who won anything, let alone a presidential debate.

Yet, Trump goes from rally to rally spewing lies from his orange mouth. It’s incomprehensible that a candidate for the highest office in the nation, arguably the world, is so irresponsible as to conjure these lies.

Trump has also makes up words. A six-year-old makes up words; presidential nominees shouldn’t. On live television, with the country’s eyes on him, he decided to make up a new adverb: bigly. Expanding Americans’ vocabulary is too hard and his is probably too small to do so, like his hands. At least, if he doesn’t win, he will have contributed to our beloved language.

He reads aloud insults and xenophobic remarks from his teleprompter, an object he once thought should be disallowed for presidential candidates.

He’s called for a ban on Muslims entering our nation; he’s called for a “deportation force,” because trying to deport millions of people is fiscally responsible and good use of taxpayers’ money.

According to the New York Times, Trump could have not payed taxes for 18 years after he lost nearly a billion dollars in a single year, which practically disproves his “immense” success as a businessman. Seriously, who loses a billion dollars and claims they’re “the best”? Additionally, Trump not paying taxes wouldn’t make him “smart,” and if that is your reason for voting for him, you should really be voting for his accountant.

The Donald is not a career politician; there’s no arguing that. He constantly claims he’ll have “the best” advisers. Getting hung up on a beauty queen from 1996 isn’t an enticing political strategy, a strategy, which I’m sure, his career political operatives argued strongly against.

He lowers the level of debate. Instead of arguing key issues, like national security, domestic or foreign policy, he stays up well into the wee hours of the night and smears a beauty queen. Do we really want a man that delves into the depths of tabloid trash as our president? Is this the man we want representing our country?

Presidential candidates are given a tremendous megaphone; anything they say is repeated, replayed and debated meticulously. It is irresponsible to waste such an opportunity. He doesn’t articulate any of his rather scarce policy initiatives with elegance, swiftness or grace. He doesn’t answer, or ask, the bigger questions. Trump, instead, appeals to the lowest common denominator. He should raise them up, not bring the rest of us down.